China Mobile will use Nokia’s ‘worldwide IoT network grid’ (WING) to offer enterprise customers IoT connectivity at home and abroad. Nokia’s WING service affords operators a way to offer cellular IoT services without having to invest in global infrastructure.
The deal, signed with China Mobile IoT (CMIoT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Mobile, expands the capability of the China based operator’s OneLink platform, according to Nokia. The OneLink IoT platform is used to manage connectivity for over 500 million IoT devices in China, making it the biggest IoT platform by volume.
WING offers a pay-as-you-go business model for global IoT infrastructure. In March, Nokia added support for 5G networking and multi-access edge computing (MEC) to the WING platform, as the Finnish vendor seeks to help mobile operators drive industrial change in global markets.
Nokia said operators can get rolling with 5G-based IoT – affording low latency, high security, and go-faster throughput – “faster and [more] cost-effectively”. It said the OneLink arrangement will afford China-based IoT customers to offer international roaming services, and to capture a greater share of the market.
It presented the deal as a way for them to “break through traditional boundaries and geographical limitations”. Nokia and China Mobile will jointly build a Chinese node of Nokia WING for CMIoT in Chongqing, they said, in a bid also to support WING-based IoT traffic roaming into the country.
Yaqiong Tang, deputy general manager at CMIoT, said: “The WING IoT platform solution will give us a competitive edge with new enterprise customers and enable us to provide the level of IoT connectivity and management that all our customers expect both in China and across the globe.”
Ankur Bhan, head of the WING business units at Nokia, said: “Our WING solution will allow CMIoT to offer a superior IoT services experience to its customers at home and abroad. Its flexible, invest-as-you-grow business model will also enable CMIoT to go-to-market with this offering rapidly and be able to scale IoT services cost-effectively.”
Nokia struck the same deal with US-based AT&T back in 2018, and has been adding carriers between times. Nokia intends with its WING partners to develop, test and launch new IoT services, including for transportation, health, manufacturing, retail, agriculture, utilities, consumer electronics and smart cities. The WING platform is designed to help launch IoT services quickly, and on a wider global scale.
